Last week I wrote for The Cauldron, a new sports vertical on the Medium platform, about Hope Solo, gender and domestic violenceand the excuse-making that has surrounded the discussion of a female athlete being charged with physical aggression. Here’s what I wrote about the counterreaction that is as disappointing as it was predictable:

“The real burr under the saddle for those who indulge in tales of endless male perfidy against women is that the media’s NFL-bashing has been disrupted, at least temporarily. The Solo case, and any consideration of it, dashes the media’s shame game against the male sports culture. So the narrative has to be reset, with all the requisite buzzwords and phrases.”

At the time I didn’t expand much on that link. It comes from Grantland writer Louisa Thomas, who was lauded far and wide in the sports media for that piece, “Together We Make Football.”

While she reminds readers of the ugly recent history of alleged domestic violence involving NFL figures, Thomas goes down the tragic rabbit hole of assessing that “what’s really wrong with football” isn’t Roger Goodell and the rash of charges against players involving women and children.

No, it’s that dastardly “culture” of football, with its inherent violence and “pseudo-military tactics” exemplified by — wait for it — “the biggest and strongest exponent of American masculinity” on display every Sunday on the professional gridiron. Here we go again.

Thomas, an otherwise intelligent and talented writer, goes so sadly astray in ways that are gaining dubious traction in the sports media. She places herself in the love-hate, push-pull conflict of so many football fans:

“I have come to love a good road-grading offensive line. I see it and I respond to football instinctively. I feel it. It taps into some dark and thrilling part of me, the sight of those magnificent athletes trying to make contact or elude it. I wish I could say that feeling is harmless, that it allows for a release of my most dangerous instincts without putting me in contact with actual danger, that it allows me to desire dominance without turning me into some kind of would-be dictator. Watching football connects me to friends and to strangers. It helps me lose myself in something bigger, something almost transcendent. It reminds me of my father, and of afternoons spent outside in the backyard learning to throw a spiral. The acrobatics of the best make me catch my breath in awe. It is just so much fun to watch.

“I wish I could say that it is a substitute for violence, that it releases and diffuses that domineering, competitive instinct latent in human nature, and leaves us with some measure of self-respect — some awareness of courage and strength. But I think I’m lying to myself. Because when I’m honest, I can see that within the culture of football, as a woman, I’m not respected. The women I see are cheerleaders, sideline reporters, WAGs. I hear men talk, and I know that when they use the word ‘girl,’ it’s shorthand for something weak.”

What’s really weak here is Thomas succumbing to the soppy egalitarianism of far too much contemporary American media on social and cultural issues, including the way they relate to sports:

“I can see that within the culture of football, as a woman, I’m not respected.”

Oh, please. This isn’t about you, Louisa, or about respecting you. But this rhetorical attempt to presume that all women ought to feel this way because they’re women is deeply offensive. The problems with the NFL and domestic violence are behavorial among a handful of individuals, rather than cultural, as is the case in every segment of society.

Yet Thomas, while acknowledging this truth in passing, goes right back to culture-blaming by dredging up the Javon Belcher case and lambasting the league and its supposed hostility to women and children. “If it’s a family,” she concludes, “then it’s a fucked-up family.”

I realized a long time ago there were things about the world of football I would never understand because, as a woman, I never played the sport. But I’ve never felt “disrespected” by the “culture of football,” even as I was covering the sport as a journalist and knew I was stepping into somewhat unwelcome terrain.

Frankly, it’s not something I worry about, because the “culture of football” doesn’t directly affect my life, and those who clumsily try to personalize the current crisis come across as just a little more than self-absorbed.

Some hold up Thomas’ work, and that of others on the current NFL crisis, as examples of why we’re in the “Golden Age of Sportswriting.”But Thomas doesn’t do any original reporting, and her thesis is hardly new. The feminist grievance against football is as old as feminism itself, and was renewed with scurrilous effect 20 years ago in the name of elevating women’s sports. At the very least, Thomas ought to be flagged for piling on.

While I believe there is some sensational work being done across the sports media, the current diatribes against football have more to do with cultural pontificating and a general queasiness about the sport. If I wanted to borrow the reasoning of these individuals, I could blame the “culture” of the generally liberal media for this proliferation of nonsense, just like conservative polemicists do.

But that’s no more accurate than chalking up the problems of the NFL to its supposed “culture’s projection of masculinity.” Dissecting this media propensity is worth another post for another place.

“Try as we will to weigh him down with meaning, the athlete remains one step ahead of us.”

— Stephen Amidon, “Something Like the Gods”

* * * * * * * *

Has the contemporary sports star finally been caught in the grasp of social media mobs who scrutinize, judge and presume guilty with the ridiculous ease and light-speed that digital technology and electronic gadgets provide?

The continuing saga stemming from the Ray Rice case has engulfed the top rung of NFL leadership, the ownership of the Baltimore Ravens and a lucrative, powerful sport seemingly operating with oblivion in a moral vacuum that is turning off many who call themselves fans.

Whether enough people will ever turn away for good is doubtful, but the lasting impact of the league’s inaction over Rice’s brutal, videotaped episode of beating his now-wife Janay Rice has been devastating, and not just as far as the former Ravens running back is concerned.

Amidon, a novelist, published his book, subtitled “A Cultural History of the Athlete from Achilles to LeBron,” two years ago, just as the sordid Lance Armstrong story was unfolding.

That seems like child’s play compared to what’s been transpiring in recent weeks, and it goes far beyond a few gruesome seconds caught on tape in an Atlantic City hotel elevator, or harrowing accounts of alleged child abuse by Vikings running back Adrian Peterson.

The certitude of the commentariat — that we think we know all we need to know about Rice, based on one incident — is most troubling. Presumptions from anti-domestic violence advocates that Rice had beaten Janay before were based on nothing more than that, presumption. So were suggestions that she suffers from battered-wife syndrome for standing by her man, and for lashing out against the media after the video was released, and his contract was terminated.

“Something Like the Gods” recounts the thousands of years of history of the enduring iconography of the athlete, from the days in which he was treated as a proud shaman in ancient Greece and Rome, to his seeming decline as the age of Puritanism beckoned with the rise of Luther and Calvin.

The athlete regained his pagan power as boxing entered the public consciousness as a spectator event in the 1800s, followed by organized competition in team sports during the Industrial Revolution. Once again, the athlete adapted as Victorian society demanded a gentlemanly, amateur participant, in service to empire above all and in particular to its capitalistic puppeteers, who truly acted with impunity.

From the banished Black Sox to the raised fists of Tommie Smith and John Carlos, the athlete’s story in the 20th century ranged from powerlessness to political revolution. In his final chapter, “Up Close and Personal,” Amidon fingers what drives the public’s obsession with today’s athlete: the level of intimacy we believe we have with him (and a few hers) through media exposure and product endorsements. Many fans, Amidon writes:

“. . . come to feel as if they have a right to participate in his private life. They are invested in his struggles and redemptions off the field as well as on it.”

Even better put on Twitter:

The public’s thirst for athlete’s interpersonal drama, and media’s willingness to feed it is a snake eating itself. It’s bad for sports.

“It’s not just about gossip. There is a moral dimension to this presumed intimacy. Athletes are now supposed to inspire us with more than just their play. While the competitor’s performance has been used as a source of uplift since the dying wrestler Arrichion refused to give up the fight, his entire life is now expected to be exemplary.”

Those we find exemplary we tend to know even less about. While Rice, Peterson, Greg Hardy, Ray McDonald and Jameis Winston are caught in the glare of football’s sprawling existential crisis, America has been bidding a fond farewell to Derek Jeter, who is playing his final games at Yankee Stadium this week.

Of course there are blowhard detractors, but much of the praise about Jeter for more than two decades has gone beyond his stellar play that surely will land him in Cooperstown. He’s a model of gracefulness and admirably good behavior off the field, a stark contradiction to so many in uniform in so many sports.

But how much do we really know about Jeter? Peyton Manning? Other seemingly stand-up guys?

Do we like the athletes we like because we really don’t know much about them away from the game, because they’ve worked to keep their private lives just that — private? And that they’ve never gotten their names in the press for all the wrong reasons?

Whatever shortcomings they may possess are assiduously kept away from public consumption, and that is to their credit. Here’s Amidon again:

“As spectators come to know the ‘humanized’ athlete better and discover that they do not really like him, there is a growing tendency to dehumanize him in order to maintain his purity.”

. . . . . . . . . . .

“For us to identify with the athlete, to thrill in his performances, he still needs to be like us. We still need a vital connection to him.”

Like characters in a book, play or movie, we want athletes to be likable, even empathetic. It’s human nature to want this, of course, and it’s understandable. But we assign a status in society to athletes that we don’t seem to demand of other public figures.

Is this because sports matter more to many of us than empty celebrity culture? Are the games more redeemable than the throwaway music, films and television programs that denigrate and debase women more than any NFL player and the “football culture” ever could?

I’d like to think so, in spite of all the awful news of the last few weeks.

As I’ve written before, I’m watching less football these days for other reasons, and I understand those who may be boycotting the NFL even though I think the game itself is getting an unfair rap. Many Americans are just uncomfortable with football the way some have become about boxing.

But ditch the sanctimony about football’s failure to deal with persistent social and criminal problems.

Roger Goodell’s leadership leaves an awful lot to be desired, but he shouldn’t be expected to compensate for what police, prosecutors and judges address very unevenly in thousands of local law enforcement jurisdictions across the country.

It’s been far too easy to bash Goodell, the “culture” of the NFL, and “toxic masculinity,” but they’re not the culprits.

Some want the NFL to “send a message” about violence against women, and to lead efforts for a cultural rethinking, when the tangible, lasting change will come about in the broader society.

Typical of the reflexive fare about Dungy/Rice is this Scott Simon interviewon NPR Saturday with Bloomberg sports columnist Kavitha Davidson, who wrote on both topics. Utterly hacktastic.

Only a handful of pieces attempted to cut through the black-and-white pontificating, and they were either ignored or slammed. But they are worth linking to, and I hope you’ll keep an open mind and read them:

“It should and has been noted that Dungy has come out against same-sex marriage in the past, but Dungy never said that he wouldn’t select Sam because he’s gay. If anything, Dungy said that Sam just isn’t a valuable enough commodity to justify the media circus that will surround him, a.k.a., the Tim Tebow Corollary.

“The 58-year-old former coach made the mistake of being candid.”

(A disclaimer: In April I was a guest of Walters on The Grotto, his Notre Dame sports podcast, but we’ve occasionally done some sparring on Twitter on other issues.)

Here’s a bit of a Twitter exchange including a suggestion from a sportswriter for The Chicago Tribune:

@jdubs88 I just don't have a lot of patience for the brand of intolerance Dungy is serving. Has no place in our society anymore.

Later in the week, Gregg Doyel of CBSSports.com echoed Walters, writing that the distraction wasn’t Sam or his sexuality, but the media feeding frenzy for a seventh-round draft pick.

While I think his handlers are doing a poor job and the media is treating his arrival as Lindbergh landing in Paris, I hope Sam makes it in the NFL. I also disagree with Dungy on gay issues. But none of that is the point.

• Journalists were quick to blast Goodell (here’s a sampling of reaction) for all kinds of alleged hypocrisy in sitting Rice for the first two games of the regular season only.

Michael Rosenberg of Sports Illustrated was virtually alone in saying that despite his own reservations, the commissioner still made the right call:

“Ray Rice was not convicted. His case never even went to trial. He pleaded not guilty to a single count of third-degree aggravated assault and entered a diversionary pre-trial intervention program for first-time offenders.

“This kind of fact tends to get lost in the modern media climate, especially on Twitter. We draw a line in the sand, jump to one side as quickly as possible, and scream that people on the other side are morons. The instinct is to say ‘HE BEAT UP A WOMAN AND ONLY GOT SUSPENDED TWO GAMES’ and feel proud of ourselves. If anybody tries to dispute the point, or bring some nuance to the discussion, or (gasp!) understand both sides of the argument, that person gets shot down. In this case, that person is easily branded as supporting a domestic abuser.”

And:

“We have a justice system for a reason. It is not perfect, but it’s what we have. It is very possible that prosecutors thought Rice was guilty but did not think they could get a jury to convict him. . . . Nonetheless, this was the outcome of Rice’s journey through the justice system.

“Now: If you were Roger Goodell, what would you do? Can you really suspend Rice for half a season or more based on what you think probably happened?”

It’s an argument lost on too many of Rosenberg’s peers, who don’t venture beyond tales of endless male perfidy/female victimology. The difficulties of investigating and prosecuting domestic violence and rape are ignored, if acknowledged at all. Kangaroo-court actions are demanded to “send a message” about male jocks who hurt women.

This was as rare a point made in the sports media as Rosenberg’s:

Why is there more consternation about the NFL's light punishment of Ray Rice than the legal system's light punishment of Ray Rice?

Sports journalists like to demonstrate how enlightened they are on social issues. But many are remiss in deeply exploring unanswered questions that need serious critical attention from them. Such as:

• What happens when a famous pro football player is shot to death in his sleep by a woman?

Crickets.

Five years ago this month, this happened to Steve McNair in a murder-suicide, but the anniversary was barely noticed in the media. When you Google his name, right below his Wikipedia entry is an ESPN The Magazineprofile of his 20-year old assassin(by a female writer) that is borderline sympathetic.

Jovan Belcher of the Kansas City Chiefs got no such treatment after he killed his pregnant girlfriend, then turned the gun on himself in front of his coach and general manager. A parade of media diatribes about (male) athletes and domestic violence included this noxious crap from Dave Zirin, who implicated the team and the NFL.

You know, blaming the “culture” as well as the institution of professional football, instead of an individual.

Last year ex-WNBA player Chamique Holdsclaw pleaded guilty to a felony — firing a gun inside her former girlfriend’s SUV after breaking the windows.

Not only did she get a general pass from the press, the Tennessee Lady Vols great also received this redemptive media indulgencementioning her crime only in passing, and very deep in the story.

Former pro tennis star Jennifer Capriati cut a deal with Florida authorities earlier this year to drop stalking and battery charges in exchange for community service and anger management courses for her confrontation with an ex-boyfriend. No media fulminations were to be found.

Earlier this month marked the end of a blog devoted to the Duke lacrosse controversy. Brooklyn College history professor K.C. Johnson’s Durham-in-Wonderland was inspired by what he saw as “an indefensible betrayal by professors of their own school’s students.” But Johnson also was a rare watchdog of the media excesses of the case, notably The New York Times.

As I wrote last month, it’s as if the media has learned nothing from the Duke story. Instead, personal emotions are substituted for the presumption of innocence and journalistic diligence of complicated issues.

For when it comes to assessing the full picture of domestic violence — it is hardly the one-sided story that is often portrayed — an otherwise self-righteous American sports media is decidedly incurious.

Only a few hours after Jovan Belcher of the Kansas City Chiefs shot his girlfriend to death and then took his own life, grand pronouncements about the cause of this tragedy predictably made their way into publication, and on television airwaves.

With only threadbare facts available to them beyond the deaths that left an infant girl an orphan, the sports media rushed swiftly into high gear, tapping into touchy social and political terrain. This isn’t unusual, given the competitive 24/7 environment that demands instant reactions to feed page views, propels ratings and positions sports media figures prominently in the “conversation” still to come.

I won’t wade into the gun control comments made by Bob Costas on NBC’s Sunday Night Football, and similar sentiments expressed by Fox Sports columnist Jason Whitlock. This is a controversy that, not surprisingly, is taking on a life of its own, and now the expected pushback has commenced.

Before I dig further into her column, it’s important to note two things: Her missive was posted on espnW, the Worldwide Leader’s female-oriented site.

Also crucial here is a sentence that Hill writes high in her piece, but only in passing and doesn’t bother to revisit:

“As of now, it does not appear Belcher had any history of domestic abuse.”

Kasandra Perkins was the victim of a violent act — a fatal shooting in her home at the age of 22, just three months after she gave birth to Belcher’s daughter.

But instead of stopping there, realizing that writing anything more along these lines would amount to sheer speculation, Hill descends down an unfortunate cultural rabbit hole:

Regardless of whether we ever learn the full story behind what led to this unspeakable tragedy, violence against women is a significant problem in our society. In sports, it’s sometimes met with indifference until something like this happens.

Hold on here. In the space of two sentences, we have an admission from Hill that we don’t know if the Belcher-Perkins relationship was a physically abusive one, to her broad-based lament about domestic violence in society, including the macho world of organized athletics.

The “full story” be damned — a deadline looms, after all — Hill’s argument spirals dismally from there. She cites former Syracuse quarterback Don McPherson, who proudly describes himself as a “feminist” member of the College Football Hall of Fame. Always prepared with the evergreen quote, McPherson bemoans how the sports world doesn’t want to grapple with these issues.

Next, Hill goes to another leading male critic of the male sports culture, professor Jeff Benedict, who tracks arrests of athletes, and who found a high percentage of them in a recent survey period involved domestic violence. Nowhere in her piece does she question how many of these arrests led to actual convictions. As during the ’90s, when this issue first resonated — including the debunked Super Bowl and domestic violence connection — accusation is tantamount to guilt.

Hill drops numbers from a National Coalition Against Violent Athletes survey — a survey from1995, seventeen years ago, during the height of the hysteria that Benedict, among others, helped to foment.

More recently, she mentions a domestic violence case against former Oregon running back LaMichael James, who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, as well as a nasty, threatening text message sent by former Florida running back Chris Rainey to a woman.

And then there’s the 2010 murder of Virginia lacrosse player Yeardley Love by George Huguely, a member of the Virginia men’s lacrosse team, which Hill references to set up her essential point:

“It also raises questions about how violence against women is marginalized by the legal system and how some coaches, based on the weak punishments, desensitize athletes to the issue.”

That we still don’t know anything about whether there was domestic abuse between Jovan Belcher and Kasandra Perkins doesn’t stop Hill from indicting the male sports culture on a platform designed for the consumption of female readers. It is a cheap and easy appeal to their sense of outrage before any relevant facts are known, and it prompts an emotional response instead of cultivating understanding:

“Sports is supposed to teach men the proper values — leadership, teamwork and accountability — but locker rooms also sometimes promote a twisted sense of masculinity and pander to jock culture that is firmly rooted in being anti-woman.”

To use a still-emerging story to rehash this litany of woman-as-perpetual-victim is disgraceful. It insults every actual victim of domestic violence, regardless of gender and whether it’s at the hands of an athlete or not.

As I wrote earlier this year about hockey players at Boston University, the culprit is not a “male sports culture.” To blame external forces for criminal behavior is to absolve individuals of responsibility for their own actions. Rae Carruth is sitting in a prison cell because he murdered his pregnant girlfriend. That he was a player for the Carolina Panthers at the time generated voluminous coverage, but he did not kill her because he was an athlete.

We may never completely know what drove Javon Belcher to do what he did on Saturday. Other speculation centers on mental illness, and the effects of concussions. But that’s all it is — speculation.

Jemele Hill would like for you to think, without any evidence, that the football universe he inhabited may have played a part in the murder of a young woman before he turned his gun on himself.

But from the Chiefs’ post-game locker room came this response from quarterback Brady Quinn, also a product of the “jock culture” denounced by Hill. His dignified and deeply humane thoughts, devoid of ideology and rampant speculation, have been largely ignored amid the hot air coming from the sports media:

“The one thing people can hopefully try to take away, I guess, is the relationships they have with people. I know when it happened, I was sitting and, in my head, thinking what I could have done differently. When you ask someone how they are doing, do you really mean it? When you answer someone back how you are doing, are you really telling the truth? We live in a society of social networks, with Twitter pages and Facebook, and that’s fine, but we have contact with our work associates, our family, our friends, and it seems like half the time we are more preoccupied with our phone and other things going on instead of the actual relationships that we have right in front of us. Hopefully people can learn from this and try to actually help if someone is battling something deeper on the inside than what they are revealing on a day-to-day basis.”